Show Us Do Not Tell Us
One covenant of a successful live performance is adherence to the “Show, Don’t Tell” mandate. In its most essential form, that mantra means action has much more value to the human heart than mere listening.
If I Were a Boy on YouTube
Beyonce has a new double CD — I Am… Sasha Fierce — and I think it’s a pretty good set of music even though some of her hardcore fans feel she sold out. I understand she wants to widen her fan base. She doesn’t want to be Beyonce. She wants to be Barbara Streisand.
The biggest hit from her CD so far is — If I Were a Boy — and when you listen to the song, you are taken on a fascinating journey of gender identification and sexual role playing. Of course, the video ruins the song by hammering you over the head with the twist of the story by adding ridiculous and unnecessary dialogue.
Creation Breeds Imitation
Aristotle taught us we learn through imitation.
If Aristotle is right, then we need to be wary with our adoration in imitation because modeling the behavior of the wrong person can imprint a life in awful and classically tragic ways.
The creative process is also inspired by Aristotle’s revelation.
We only create what we what we experience. There are no new ideas. Nothing is created from nothingness.
Every inspiration has a core. Every idea has a pre-existing father.
Our job as artists is to conjoin separate, disparate, and outrageous existing ideas and present them as new thoughts that spark inspired learning processes in others.
We teach through surprise connections.
We learn because creation breeds imitation.
Lindsay Lohan Proves Her Illiteracy
Young people look up to other young people. Unfortunately, many of the role models young people choose to use to model are not worthy of imitation or the attention. If you ever needed proof of why young people should not look up to celebrities and imitate their morality and their behavior in the classic Aristotlean way of learning and mimicry, please read actress Lindsay Lohan’s incoherent — and frankly, illiterate — public sympathy card to genius film director Robert Altman’s family she released on Tuesday to see the sad, living proof, of a Long Island public education and the perils of false celebrity.
Raised On Radio
At 14-years-old I started in radio in Lincoln, Nebraska as the host of a weekly 10 minute interview show called Unique Youth. I would celebrate kids in the community who were making a positive difference in the lives of others.
Rick Alloway was my mentor and defender. Unique Youth aired on KFOR 1240 — the number one station in the city — and on their FM sister station X103 (now known as KFRX 102.7 after the advent of digital stereo tuners) at 5:30am Fridays.
I was quickly able to move up to weekend air shifts and I steadily worked in radio at KFOR and X103 as well as KLMS 1480 (the call letters at the time were pronounced “Kay-Elle-Aim-Esh-ah!” on air in an old-time classic boss jock performance) and KBHL FM. Later I added television to my resume when I became the teen movie critic on Kidding Around — with hostess Leta Powell Drake — for broadcast powerhouse KOLN/KGIN-TV and those stations had a coverage map the shape and size of the entire state of Nebraska.
Haunted by the Tragedy of Wendy
Today I am haunted by yesterday and the tragic death of Playwright Wendy Wasserstein. She died of lymphoma at the age of 55. Her sister died of breast cancer at 60. Wendy, unmarried, left behind a six-year-old daughter named Lucy Jane who was born three months premature and weighed 1-pound, 12-ounces at birth.
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